Monday, August 18th, 2008

To avoid the label of whinger I’m putting this post up as a cautionary tale for anyone who finds themselves in need of assistance at Wellington Hospital Emergency rooms.

Number One. Get a copy of any paperwork they generate when and if you ever enter ER.

My appointment to attend heart clinic was today, and the cardiologist started the conversation with, “so no worries then?” Now, this isn’t his fault. Once we unpacked the goings-on it turns out that ER isn’t sending any information from my file up to cardiology… so the cardiologist has nothing to go on.

Worse, the radiologists at Hutt Hospital aren’t sending stuff through to Wellington, so again, no information.

And my question is, WTF?

How the hell is a medical system supposed to work with no goddamn information transfer!? I have only one medical number, so why is my information not being sent to a centralised database for christssakes?

Gripe over.

My good fortune is to have an uncle who is a cardiologist in London. This means he was able to diagnose me by reading my blog, and insisted on an MRI and other tests. He’s familiar with a wider range of issues and recognised something that no-one here was able to pick up. He also insisted that no-one here owuld be able to pick up what he did…

Short story?

I regret that I live so close to this hospital. The cardiologist is a decent bloke, but needs decent info to do his job, which he just isn’t getting. And it’s goddamn annoying.